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Nominated for the 2015 Giller PrizeNominated for the 2015 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction PrizeAmong the National Post‘s 50 Best Books of 2015One of Quill & Quire’s Books of the Year, 2015Among NOW Toronto’s Top 10 Books of 2015

In the stories of Confidence, there are ecstasy-taking PhD students, financial traders desperate for husbands, owners of failing sex stores, violent and unremovable tenants, aggressive raccoons, seedy massage parlors, experimental filmmakers who record every second of their day, and wives who blog insults directed at their husbands. There are cheating husbands. There are private clubs, crowded restaurants, psychiatric wards. There is one magic cinema and everyone has a secret of some kind.

“Smith, a long-time Globe and Mail columnist, is a gifted anthropologist of the urbane. Those gifts are on full display throughout Confidence.”—The Globe and Mail

“[Confidence] may to the uninitiated seem otherworldly in its lasciviousness; to the initiated, it seems merely accurate.”—Rebecca Tucker, The National Post

“Darkly hilarious … Toronto author and arts journalist Russell Smith continues his assault on what he sees as the tame sensibility of Canadian literary fiction … Confidence finds Smith at the top of his game.”—Morley Walker, The Winnipeg Free Press

“In the world of these stories, love is a game, secrets pile up, needs go unmet, compromises and negotiations are constantly being made … [Yet the final pieces] soften the book’s unflinching tone and deliver, finally, emotional resonance by hinting at vulnerable humanity and the truest, simplest desires behind the exhaustive chase of pleasure.”—Carla Gillis, Quill & Quire

“Smith…demonstrates his singular ability to write about shallow people and still make a deep impact. This is the writer whose craft made the biggest leap this year.”—NOW (NNNN)

“When I pick up a book by Russell Smith I’ve come to expect to read about sex, and ambition, and a city that can be exciting and superficial, and glitters with the promise that it doesn’t always deliver. There is all that in his new collection of short stories.” —Shelagh Rogers, CBC Radio One’s The Next Chapter

“Darkly funny, Confidence skewers modern relationships with just enough hope and romance left at the bottom of Pandora’s box to remind us why we suffer through the tribulations of love…This is not the stodgy CanLit you were assigned in school – Russell Smith’s writing is sharp and sultry…” —W Dish